Helping

I read a great article on a great blog called The Common Room about the difference between helping someone and inflicting help on someone. In other words, why "help" should refer to what you do for someone, rather than what you do to them.

The story reminded me of the time I was six and someone kindly "helped" Mom by enrolling me in public school without her knowledge.

If you think about it, the act was most likely not done maliciously but because someone was being "helpful" by going through census data for the school district and signing all the six-year-olds up so the parents didn't need to do it. They probably figured, "Hey, it's the law and this kid's going to have to come in - might as well save some time."

Mom also remembers that someone did call the year I was five to remind her it was time for me to attend kindergarten. Thinking to keep us off the school district's radar, she politely informed the caller "No thanks - I'm not sending her until next year." The caller is probably the culprit responsible for my inadvertent enrollment in a school I was never intended to darken the doors of.

Had Mom told the truth, the eventual calling of the truant officer at our front door (and our neighbors' front doors, incidentally) might've been forestalled; or it might've been superseded by a court battle. Homeschoolers are a paranoid bunch and back then everything was done with a cautious eye on how someone might swoop down at any moment to snatch your kids away and never return them, all because you weren't too keen on them being brainwashed by someone else instead of you. Today the Old Guard cringes at the freedom young whippersnappers assume in announcing to everyone who asks "Nope, we're not sending our darlings off to your rotten school: we're Homeschooling!" The fact of the matter is people aren't hounded nearly so much now and the idea of lying about enrolling your kid next year seems strange to some.

At the time, though, Mom had reason for paranoia. It might not have been strictly illegal to homeschool, but it wasn't exactly sanctioned by law either. Your classic gray area, and I'm sure if you were true to the spirit of the laws at the time, homeschooling was forbidden. Same situation as when a kid is forbidden to draw with crayon on the bedroom wall: the kid obeying the spirit of the command wouldn't draw on the living room wall either.

However, all paranoia aside, someone did try to do us a favor by circumventing Mom's duty to come in and enroll me herself. It was definitely a case of help being done for us, however, the kind of help that is no help at all no matter what the good intentions of the enthusiastic helper.